1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a grinding support for supporting a portion of a workpiece during a grinding process, and particularly, to a grinding support for supporting a round member, like a pin, during a grinding process. The present invention is also directed to a grinding support assembly utilizing such a support.
2. Description of Related Art
It is conventionally known to use pin members, their diameters being custom-adjusted by grinding, in injection molds, extrusion dies, and the like.
Such grinding has been conventionally performed by mounting a pin member at one end, leaving the other end free, and grinding the pin member using a conventional grinding tool, like an abrasive grinding wheel.
However, this approach causes problems which lead to, among other things, inefficiency, poor results, and slow processing.
For example, when the grinding wheel contacts the pin member mounted only at one end, as discussed above, the frictional contact tends to make the pin member flutter or chatter relative to the grinding wheel. This causes poor or inaccurate grinding, since contact between the grinding wheel and the pin member cannot be consistently controlled. One conventional solution is to make only light contact between the grinding wheel and the pin member, but this makes the process more inefficient because only small grinding "cuts" are then possible so that it takes longer to achieve the desired level of grinding. Another conventional solution is to use generic support blocks or the like to support the free end of the pin member during grinding. It will be appreciated, however, that precisely supporting both ends of the pin member is not generally possible since such support blocks typically have varying dimensions. This can cause the pin member to be tilted during grinding, which causes an undesirable variation in the grind along the length of the member.